The junta will initiate intrusive internet surveillance starting Monday to capture all varieties of traffic to web sites and social media, according to a media report.
Using an unspecified “surveillance device” to look for creators and consumers of “illegal content,” specifically that violating Article 112, Prachatai yesterday cited two anonymous sources saying the surveillance tech will be capable of incercepting ostensibly secure communications, such as encrypted channels.
Although eavesdropping online is a crime under the Computer Crime Act, Prachatai said a junta order issued in the days after the coup authorizes itself to do so.
The idea of monitoring all network traffic has been raised before, once in 2010 when the Ministry of Information and Computer Technology floated it as a means to combat piracy, and again in 2011 when a deputy prime minister claimed THB400 million would be spent on a similar effort.
The Prachatai report is otherwise scant on details, and such technology would be more advanced by several orders of magnitude than MICT’s blocking system, which is – reportedly – easily circumvented.
Real or not, the report says it is already having a chilling effect among the media with outlets adopting tighter rules for self-censorship.
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